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Language teaching - Life :) - Other sports

Vară în Timișoara

July 2, 2018 by 0 Comments

It’s not a bad day to be in Timișoara. The temperature has dropped into the very pleasant low twenties. (That’s only a reprieve, surely.) Earlier this afternoon I was in Piața Libertății, reading the start of Tender Is the Night by Scott Fitzgerald, when a man in his sixties came up to me, impressed that I was reading a book in English. Then the mayor, and presumably his wife, walked past. They were eating an ice cream. Walking alongside the School of Music at the northern end of the square, on the other side of the tram tracks, I was treated, as always, to the sounds of vigorous practice in just about anything you can strum or tinkle or blow into.

I read that the boats (vaporașe) on the Bega, which they were trialling when I arrived here 21 months ago, will finally be put into action. There had been some bureaucracy emanating from Bucharest that threatened to put the kibosh on the whole thing.

This morning I had a lesson with my Italian student, taking my total for the week to 20 hours. After all those interruptions, I’ve lost some momentum, but I’m relatively confident I can build it again, even if August (the big getaway month) is only one month away. As my student and I completed an IELTS writing exercise, I saw the man with no legs ride his hand-cranked wheelchair to the cathedral, park it beside the steps, and painstakingly clamber up all twelve of them. For god’s sake (literally), can’t you build a bloody ramp?! Some things about Romania make me angry.

My student was disappointed that France beat Argentina yesterday, citing the number of black and Muslim players in the side. How bigoted. He also unashamedly cheats in his exams. But he has a lot of lessons with me, so I don’t complain too much. Friday was my best day of the week – four lessons, including one with three people. For that lesson I sat on what is probably called an ottoman, because I only have three chairs.

The World Cup continues to delight. Both of yesterday’s matches were crackers. Long may it continue, while the spectre of 2022 looms darkly in the form of Qatar Airways advertising hoardings surrounding the pitch. From a personal viewpoint, there is some well-founded optimism this time in the England camp. For once they have a non-Delboy-like manager with a good tactical brain, who hasn’t had to be imported from Sweden or Italy. On Tuesday they face Colombia, who (like four years ago) have been one of my favourite teams so far. I’d quite like to visit Colombia, if this 1997 video of the song Demons by Super Furry Animals is anything to go by. In the same original group as Colombia, I was disappointed to see Senegal go out by virtue of accumulating two more yellow cards than Japan, after both sides had amassed four points, scored four goals, conceded four, and shared four in their head-to-head encounter. Yellow cards are dished out too subjectively to be a good tie-breaker. If some sort of play-off game is unfeasible (and I don’t totally believe it is), flipping a coin might actually be better. As for the Mannschaft, which still sounds like part of the male anatomy, they just weren’t quite good enough. The victims of very un-German complacency, perhaps.

Fishing. One day I’ll know what I’m doing enough to spend a pleasant, relaxing morning by the water. One day I’ll even catch a fish. But today is not that day.

Life :) - Other sports

Last gasp

June 24, 2018 by 0 Comments

Wow. I’ve just watched Germany get out of jail against Sweden. With only ten men and staring probable elimination in the face, a jaw-dropping last-gasp free kick winner from a crazy angle on the edge of the box means they’ll make it to the knockout rounds now in all likelihood. I felt sorry for Sweden.

For me, this feels like the last-ever World Cup, so I’m trying to enjoy it. Everything is wrong about Qatar, the hosts in four years’ time. Then in 2026 the competition will expand to 48 teams, planned to be drawn into 16 mini-groups of three. Too many teams. Terrible format. Just ugh.

During tonight’s game the Romanian commentators kept referring to the German team as the Mannschaft, which sounds pretty funny in English. Sometimes they would put it into (I think) the genitive case: mannschaftului. Plenty of other languages have borrowed this German term (it probably sounds very German), but curiously the Germans don’t use it themselves: for them it just means “team”. Or rather, they didn’t use it until after they won the last World Cup. They then rebranded the national team as Die Mannschaft for marketing purposes, capitalising on the popularity of the term in other languages. This reminds me of the term Bahasa, which some English speakers use to refer to the Indonesian language, presumably because it sounds cooler than “Indonesian”. But in Indonesian, bahasa just means “language”.

I should have mentioned that on Tuesday night we all tried a papanași, a quite wonderful dessert that’s a bit like a rum baba, but without the rum, and bigger. Delicious, and well worth the long wait before we eventually got it.

Tomorrow morning I’ll try my hand at fishing, without Dad’s help. Who knows if I’ve rigged up my rod in a way that it won’t all fall apart.

Family - International travel - Life :)

Mum and Dad’s visit — Part 4

June 24, 2018 by 0 Comments

In our last two evenings in Belgrade we ate in the main square. It was full of life. Young people who walked fast, mainly. We saw surprisingly few people on their phones. Eating there simplified things: we were starting to get fed up of eating out, which I’ve always thought is overrated anyway. Mum was still grappling with the badly-designed local currency. They have nine denominations of notes, ranging from 10 dinars (worth roughly 8 pence) to 5000 (almost £40). With that many values, it’s impossible to distinguish them all based on colour alone. As for the virtually worthless coins, they were identical in shape and colour, and very similar in size too. On Saturday night we got ice creams from the bar next door to our apartment. The woman who served us, if you can call it that, was miserable. We saw two ice cream prices: 30 and 70 dinars, but I couldn’t work out what the Serbian alongside each price meant. It turned out that the cone itself was 30 dinars and each scoop of ice cream was 70. That was a new one on me.

Serbia beat Costa Rica 1-0 in their opening World Cup game, thanks to a stunning free kick, and we expected to see wild celebrations in town, but they weren’t forthcoming. Sadly they conceded a late goal to Switzerland last night to lose 2-1, and are probably out of the tournament now unless they can pull off a huge upset win over Brazil.

On the last day we went down to the waterfront, and saw some fishermen with a decent haul. By this stage I was feeling a bit claustrophobic. Mum and Dad were quick to judge and criticise everything they saw; many things that annoyed them didn’t really bother me. The city had been ravaged by war only twenty years ago; of course it won’t be like Paris. It’s also much cheaper than Paris, and for that reason, as well as the interesting language, I’d quite like to go back there by myself. Perhaps I could then take the train to Bar, on the coast of Montenegro. That trip is supposed to be spectacular.

On Monday the bus was again an hour late, but at least I had a working phone. We weren’t held up very long at the border this time, but the journey still took over three hours. I had a lesson that evening. The next three mornings I did a spot of fishing with Dad, and was gradually getting the hang of it, but the fish weren’t having a bar of our rubberised sweetcorn bait. We did see people catch sizeable caras, a.k.a Prussian carp, using maggots, which I’ll need to get my hands on.

I had my 71st two-hour session with Matei on Tuesday. I’m running out of things to do with him. I prepared a piece on Ronaldo, who I thought was his favourite footballer. I thought it would be timely after he’d just scored a hat-trick for Portugal against Spain. But either I’d forgotten or Matei had changed his mind, and apparently he can’t stand Ronaldo and instead Messi is his favourite. Oh well.

My parents’ experiences here, and in Belgrade, were pretty positive on the whole. Things inevitably became strained on occasions – Mum doesn’t cope well with stress and that’s just the way she is – but she and I never had any real arguments. It helps that I’m more relaxed myself these days. They left on Thursday. I ordered a taxi, the woman on the phone said “four minutes” before I had the chance to specify a time, and before I knew it they were gone. That was a shame.

Mum and Dad are making another trip to the UK for Christmas, so I should see them then, not that I’m overly enthusiastic about enduring a horribly commercialised British Christmas.

We’ve had thunderstorms lately, and today has seen a welcome drop in temperature. I’m looking forward to everything being back to normal once more.

Family - Life :)

Mum and Dad’s visit — Part 1

June 23, 2018 by 0 Comments

Two weeks ago my parents arrived in Timișoara after a six-hour train journey from Budapest. Meeting them off the train, in what is now my home town, was one of the loveliest things. Two days ago they took a taxi to the airport. Seeing them go was really quite sad. It didn’t help that the taxi came almost immediately after I ordered it, so we weren’t able to properly say goodbye. In between, Dad taught me how to fish (or sort of – there’s still a hell of a lot to learn), Mum rearranged (i.e. hid) various items in my flat, I received a bunch of clothes that I didn’t really want, and we spent five nights in the lively city of Belgrade.

Mum and Dad’s train from Hungary was three-quarters empty and it arrived, surprisingly, bang on time. We walked from the station to their apartment, the same one my aunt and uncle stayed in at the end of May, on the fourth floor of the Communist-era block next door to mine. The entranceway to the building isn’t the most salubrious, but the floor tiles and time-worn stencilled walls give it some charm. The process of tapping in a code to retrieve their apartment key from a box – seemingly by magic – reminded me of the brilliant nineties game show The Crystal Maze. In contrast to the exterior, their apartment was rather nice.

The next day was a hot and relatively lazy one. We bought some fruit and vege from Piața Badea Cârțan, watched the world go by from the local café, and wandered through the surrounding area. Dad took numerous pictures of the figure dancing on a ball atop one of the many decaying buildings – he thought it could make a painting. It’s a beautiful piece of architecture, and it’s amazing that it’s still standing. He was also impressed by the pharmacy building, now also in a state of disrepair – it has housed a pharmacy for all of its existence, and a snake-around-a-spike (officially known as a Rod of Aclepsius) adorns its roof. It was good to see these architectural marvels through somebody else’s eyes. In the afternoon we watched Nadal chalk up yet another French Open title on the 50-something-inch TV in my parents’ apartment, and then Mum cooked a lovely dinner using the food we’d bought from the market and some of my leftover bits and pieces. Unfortunately, after that first evening we ate out, and with Mum that’s always a fraught experience.

On Monday I had a full work day – 8½ hours of teaching – so my parents were left to their own devices. The following day I only had one lesson, in the early evening with Matei, so in the morning I had my first attempt at fishing. After I’d shown an interest, Dad was keen for me to pursue it, and he kindly packed a telescopic rod in his suitcase for me. We were on a canalised or channelised (what is the word?) section of the Bega river, but really I was all at sea. I had visions of landing a ten-pound pike, but only very fleeting ones, and to begin with I was struggling to even cast the line. On Wednesday morning I popped in to the fishing licence place across the river, to pick up some kind of additional permit. I had a good chat with the woman at the desk. When I told her what I do for a job, she and one of the customers each took one of my business cards. She informed me of the various fishing quotas, and when I said I very much doubt they’d come into play for me, we had a good laugh.

International travel - Life :)

Just dropping in…

June 15, 2018 by 0 Comments

I’m writing this from Belgrade, where I’m staying with Mum and Dad. It’s Mum’s 69th birthday, the first anniversary of the Grenfell disaster, and the first day of the World Cup, which saw Russia thrash Saudi Arabia 5-0. In a few days I’ll write some proper-ish posts of my time with my parents in Romania and Serbia.

Life :) - Scrabble

Friends with benefits

June 10, 2018 by 0 Comments

It’s a stormy, muggy day here. There’s also a sense of déjà vu in the air, as Simona Halep faces off for the fourth time in a grand slam final. I’ve got a feeling that this time she’ll do it, mainly because she’s played with noticeably more aggression in her run to the final.

I’ve had some interesting lessons this week. My UK-based Skype student (he lived in Bucharest when I started with him in January) was complaining that his Kiwi boss wouldn’t let him use Facebook at work. Good on him, I wanted to say, but thought better of it. My student seems to like our lessons. Every week I pick out an article from a news website and prepare questions based on it. I have another student of 24 who is moving to the UK next month. He told me that he’s only really interested in making friends over there, or anywhere, if they can benefit him in a tangible (i.e. financial) way. I can believe that. I met somebody who worked for a bank; when I told him I taught from home, he shoved a bunch of credit card application forms in my hand for me to give to students. Um, are you serious?! I get the feeling that the guy with whom I used to play tennis gave up on me as a friend when it became obvious that I had no business contacts that he could use to his advantage. It’s a year since I last saw or heard from him.

I played three games of Scrabble last night. In the first game my opponent made bingos on his opening two turns, but even then I felt I could have beaten him. I knew I had high-probability bingos on my rack that included a blank, but somehow they eluded me. I did find a bingo at the end but it was too late; I fell to a 64-point loss. In game two it was a similar story: two early bingos by my opponent. Only this time he scored heavily, unremittingly, on his non-bingo plays too. A third bingo followed. Even though I found two bingos of my own, I fell to my heaviest defeat yet: 369 to me, a whopping 564 to my opponent. In contrast game three (12-minute clock) was a nailbiter, and as usual in sub-15-minute games I struggled with time management. I made two bingos but my opponent scored heavily with his X and Z and I held only a slender lead. I was soon behind when he later found a bingo. In a dramatic finish I spotted a place for my N with just three seconds remaining to eke out a three-point win, 413 to 410. That’s my closest game to date.

My parents’ train is due to arrive at 9:30 tonight. Dad emailed me to say that he was struggling with a bad headache after a very good run of relative freedom from them.

Update: At last! Simona did it! It didn’t look very likely at 3-6, 0-2, but she employed more variety and was more aggressive, while Stephens tired ever so slightly. What an absolute beast Simona is defensively though. Leading 3-0 in the final set but with Stephens holding a point to keep her in with a sniff, Simona was ludicruously out of position on her backhand side on each of the next three points, but was somehow able to win all of them. Quite remarkable. And a well-deserved first grand slam, finally, for the Romanian.

Life :) - Romania

The Big Day and trip report — Part 5

June 9, 2018 by 0 Comments

This afternoon my parents called me from their train which was at a station whose name began with K, about half an hour from Budapest. Barely an hour later they called me again from their Budapest apartment. They flew from Gatwick to Vienna, where they spent two nights. After two further nights in Budapest they’ll make their way to Timișoara, again by train. I’m pleased that they’re going by train: it’s a hugely underrated means of transport in Europe (the UK excepted, perhaps). Next Wednesday we’ll be bussing to Belgrade and spending four days there. If I’m honest I’d have preferred a Romania road trip, but with Mum a city break is a far safer option. I don’t take beta-blockers anymore.

It was a real pleasure to have my aunt and uncle (B and J) here, even for just two days. They’d been to China and South America in recent years, but Timișoara was something altogether different for them. They could see the city’s vast potential, but also the lack of resources holding it back. We visited the dilapidated but moving Museum of the Revolution (my fourth visit), and of course the Orthodox cathedral that’s almost literally a stone’s throw from me. I took them on a couple of mystery tram trips and we visited two of the largest markets. In late spring the markets here become quite spectacular, and my aunt and uncle were particularly impressed by the array of flowers on show. They’ve been in the flower business since they moved to South Canterbury in the mid-nineties, and it is serious business. My aunt is now the president of the NZ Rhododendron Society, and much of their travel (such as the time they recently spent in Holland) is rhodie-related.

We ate at Terasa Timișoreana both nights they were here. The second night I had the Romanian equivalent of a ploughman’s lunch, which would have been great if B and J hadn’t spent most of their time talking about (a) how Jacinda Ardern’s government is laying nine years of stability and prosperity to waste; (b) how they’ve worked very hard for everything they’ve achieved in their lives and so on and so forth; and (c) New Zealand should go back to first-past-the-post. I had the biggest problem with (c): I was convinced that FPTP was an undemocratic pile of crap at the age of twelve, and numerous elections in Britain and the US since then have done nothing to change my view. (No electoral system is perfect – that’s a fact that can be mathematically proven – but I’d say NZ’s current MMP system does a good job on the whole.)

Apart from the politics diversion which I could have done without, I got on well with B and J, as usual. They left on Thursday morning.

After a bit of a wild goose chase, today I finally got myself a fishing licence. It cost me 105 lei, including 10 lei for a passport-sized photo. Dad has packed a fishing rod in his suitcase so hopefully we’ll be able to spend a day on the Bega. Fishing isn’t something I was interested when I was younger, but in this fast-paced world it seems a relaxing way to spend a few hours, a long way from a screen.

Life :) - The UK - Travel: Romania

The Big Day and trip report — Part 4

June 3, 2018 by 0 Comments

Sunday. The morning after the night (and day) before. No full English breakfast this time. A bunch of us, including my brother, his wife, and most of the New Zealand contingent, met up at a café in the Barbican. Then it was back to the Sergeant’s Mess, where about ten of us, blokes mostly, spent two hours dismantling and re-mantling everything. My uncle B felt honoured to be selected as a tidier-upper; he likes to boast of his “special relationship” with my brother. (As a kid, my brother liked to spend time on their West Coast farm whenever he came to New Zealand. They moved back to South Canterbury in 1996.) My brother kindly gave B and me a bottle of whisky each for our readings the day before. When all the white frothiness had been cleared away, the mess looked much like a century-old tennis club room. The usual inhabitants of the mess, many of whom were at the wedding, form a very close-knit community.

I had a lazy Sunday afternoon watching the opening day of the French Open in my parents’ room. In the evening we went to Wetherspoons, where I had a curry and an apple crumble, and then walked to the newlyweds’ hotel room on the seventh floor of the Crowne Plaza. We didn’t stay long there.

Plymouth is an interesting city, particularly along the beautiful coastline, but the city centre was bombed to pieces in World War Two, and the collosal hideous-looking blocks that sprung up in the next two decades wouldn’t have seemed out of place in Communist-era Romania. Plymouth also appears to have a serious obesity problem. On that note, I’ve lost about three kilos (or half a stone) since my trip to the UK in April.

On Monday morning I had a full English once more, and then it was time to say goodbye to all the Kiwis, with the exception of B and my aunt J, who were coming to Romania with me. This was the end of their marathon trip that took in the US (where their son lives), Canada, and Holland (for the flowers). We took a taxi to the train station (they had far too much luggage to make walking an option) and boarded the 12:05 train to Paddington. We sat at opposite ends of Coach C. The journey to Paddington seemed to whizz by. We hung around Paddington station for some time; our flight wasn’t scheduled to leave until 9:50. We snapped up six reduced-to-clear sandwiches for £1 each from Boots, but then paid through the nose for coffees and muffins: three each of those cost more than I receive for a lesson. I got a call from a frustrated Mum, who had been stuck at Kings Cross for an hour and a half on a driverless train with no air conditioning. Mum and Dad were very tired and were extremely glad to eventually get back to St Ives.

Having loads of time up our sleeve helped to reduce stress. B and J were a little out of their comfort zone on the underground. My offers to help B with his suitcase mostly fell on deaf ears. We negotiated the underground, took the train to Luton, and then hopped on the shuttle bus to the airport where we ate our sandwiches and whiled away two more hours before boarding the plane. I realised that travelling with other people can be less stressful than travelling alone. Boarding was slow, as always with Wizz Air, but we were up and down in under three hours. It was after 3am by the time we exited the terminal building, and taxis were thin on the ground at that time of night, so I had to call one. B and J were staying in an apartment in the building next to mine. We followed the owner’s instructions involving keys and lifts and PIN codes, which my aunt had meticulously copied down, and (in what felt like a miracle after such a long day of travel) they gained access to their spacious apartment. Welcome to Romania!

Life :) - The UK

The Big Day and trip report — Part 3 (the main event)

June 1, 2018 by 0 Comments

On Friday night I practised my poem. I’m not a natural public speaker. I was nervous that I might make a mess of it in front of a hundred people on my brother’s special day: speak too fast, get tongue-tied, miss out an entire line, or even panic and start babbling in incomprehensible Romanian.

I woke up very early the next morning. It was freezing in my room, and I resorted to using towels and clothes to complement my thin duvet. Breakfast wasn’t till 8:30, so I read To Kill a Mockingbird. When the clock finally rolled around, we all had a full English. Some of the others eschewed the baked beans, presumably to avoid potential embarrassment in church.

We then went for a walk along a waterfront steeped in history. At 10am the Lido opened for the summer; it seemed quite popular. We walked back to the B&B and changed in time to meet at noon at the Sergeant’s Mess. My brother wore his army uniform, displaying his medals from Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan. He was understandably a little antsy, and he called us all into the church very early before declaring a false alarm.

The service started at 1pm. To my surprise, the padre continued his comedy routine from the night before, but he never overstepped the mark. It’s a fine line. It was soon my turn to read the poem. I thought I negotiated it OK, and on my way back from the podium my brother gave me a friendly tap to say I’d done a good job. Phew. Straight after me, my uncle B gave his bible reading, as he’d done at least a thousand times before in church. Towards the end of the service, after the vows had been exchanged, my brother’s wife’s sister sang quite beautifully. I’d always been cynical about weddings, perhaps because I’d never been to a wedding of anybody particularly close to me, but this was really a wonderful occasion.

After the service it was photo time. My brother later said this was the most exhausting part of the day for him. Photos with X, Y and Z, photos with X and Y but not Z, and so on. Every possible combination. My brother had planned to give everyone a tour of the citadel but had to can it because of how long all the photography took. Both my brother and his wife go rowing, and the girls from my sister-in-law’s rowing club created an archway of oars for the newlyweds to walk through. More photos. I can’t remember what the car was – it was purely ornamental anyway – but in a nice touch it was decorated with both British and New Zealand flags. Many people complemented me on my delivery of the poem; I replied by saying I did my best. It was a very touching poem without being overly sentimental, and I think the kind words I received reflected that as much as anything.

At 3:30 it was back to the mess. By this stage I had quite severe sinus pain and was struggling. The food was good. A pear-based starter followed by mountains of serrano-ham-wrapped pork for our main course, finishing up with chocolate brownie for dessert. In between, my brother, the best man (his friend since childhood) and my sister-in-law’s father all gave speeches. My brother really put the wind up Dad by asking if he’d prepared his speech. My brother said he was nervous for his speech, but he didn’t show it. He spent some time thanking our parents, admitting that he wasn’t the easiest kid to bring up. My mum drew quite a bit of laughter when she interrupted the best man’s speech to say that Dad fainted at my brother’s birth.

By five my sinus pain had largely subsided, but soon the evening started to drag. I drank beer mainly because it gave me something to do. My brother drank far more than I did. Later, enormous piles of food appeared in the adjoining conservatory, only a quarter of which actually got eaten. The rest went to the homeless. My two UK cousins both complained about their absent mother and I could hardly blame them. I was glad when we finally wended our way back to the B&B at 11:45 or so, having survived what had admittedly been a fantastic day.

Life :) - The UK

The Big Day and trip report — Part 2

June 1, 2018 by 0 Comments

The railway station was on the way back to the airport from my accommodation. Just before 9am I put my ticket in the machine at the station and got a nasty surprise. I’d been sold a ticket that was only valid for the night before, even though there were no trains the night before. An impossible ticket. What a bugger. I traipsed back to the airport, thinking that would be my best chance of some kind of refund, but honestly expecting to have to fork out an extra 60-odd quid. The Polish lady I spoke to was very helpful, however, and back at the station I eventually got a reprinted ticket at no expense, once I’d figured out where the ticket office was. The guy at the office wanted to know who sold me that useless ticket at quarter to ten at night, but I didn’t want to incriminate him.

I took the train to St Pancras, then the underground to Paddington, a huge station that I’d somehow never been to before. All the trains from Paddington seemed to be going to cool places, like the one I was about to board, whose final destination was Penzance. My journey to Plymouth was painless, except at the beginning when the only way I could get a seat was to use the loo. A lady from Sweden said that in her home country you’re guaranteed a seat if you buy a full-price ticket, as you should be. My train stopped at Reading, Exeter and Newton Abbot, and passed the coastal towns of Exmouth and Teignmouth. The sea! I hadn’t seen it for almost two years. I arrived in Plymouth at 3:30pm. At this point I’ll give you a run-down of my mum’s siblings; this trip report will become too clumsy if I don’t. Mum had three older brothers, D, B and M. Sadly D died of cancer in 2010, as did M in 2014. B is still going strong at 76; he and his wife J would be joining me in Romania after my brother’s wedding. After the three boys came Mum’s sister K, then Mum, closely followed by her brother G. Finally, seven years after G, came her baby brother P, who (it’s hard to believe) has just turned sixty. All five surviving brothers and sisters were attending the wedding.

K and G met me at the train station. It was a novelty to see G on that side of the world. He’d never previously been further than Australia. There was no question of his wife ever making the trip; they’ve lived separate lives for decades. We were all amazed and delighted that he took the opportunity of my brother’s wedding to say “sod it”. I went back to the train station with Mum and B, to book my seat on the train back to London. It would be a bank holiday; on that day a seat is imperative. B had been in Plymouth four days and, much to Mum’s annoyance, thought he knew the place like the back of his hand.

After trekking across town, we were a few minutes late for the 6pm wedding rehearsal at the 17th-century Citadel Church. The padre, as he was called, was hilarious. His humour put everybody at ease, and personally made me feel privileged to be part of such a happy occasion. He’d previously had a long career as a dancer, and clearly enjoyed being on stage. At one point he told my brother that he didn’t have to make his wedding vows as if they were military orders: “Forbetterforworse! Forricherforpoorer!”

We didn’t attend the drinks session at the mess, and besides we were all hungry. We shared some so-called giganti pizzas that weren’t that big; I could have eaten twice as much, but of course I’d get plenty of opportunities for that the next day. G really amused Dad and me when he proudly proclaimed to a bemused waitress: “I’m from Palmerston North!” That doesn’t exactly cut much ice even in his own country.